The following is the
concluding Part 3-B of “Visions of the Poets: Journey Through
‘Universes Beyond
the Visible,’” by Aberjhani. To read the first part
of this compelling personal
essay healing creative and spiritual vision, please visit the Black
Skylark
Z-Ped Music Player at http://www.authorsden.com/Aberjhani

When I
arrived at the nursing home the following
night, the scene there was a duplicate of the night before with adult
family
members crowded around Mom’s bed and younger relatives out in
the hallway
quietly entertaining themselves. Their numbers and shared sense of
religious
faith made it slightly easier to bear the knowledge that only an unseen
veil of
breath and time stood between death and a woman whose will,
intelligence, and
love had been a defining influence in all our lives. In times when we
had given
ourselves to passionate pursuits of wealth and achievements in the
modern
world, she had remained the anchor that kept our spirits balanced and
whole.
What now would happen to those who could not longer depend on her for
the moral
strength, wisdom, and love needed to negotiate the terms of their
lives.

As for me, I
was so at peace in my role of solitary
night sentry that I imagined there must have been lifetimes when I
stood upon
fortress walls scanning distance and horizons for hints of danger. And
there
was no question that in this lifetime, following the loss of my infant
children, I had developed a strong shaman-like propensity for
dream-visions in
which I sometimes carried an individual’s soul from one place
to another. After
experiencing such dreams, the individual that I had carried in the
vision
usually passed from the physical world within a week. In my
mother’s case, I
had not experienced any such dream-visions, presumably because the
reality at
hand was adequately evident.

Several days
had passed since Mom’s eyes had opened
and they remained closed as I settled in to spend my fourth night with
her. I
was glad that I still had parts three and four of Universes Beyond the
Visible
~ Elements of Dream to read.

The third
section of the book dealt with the element
of “water/agua” and I noticed that the font for the
lettering was a fluid
script reflective of the subject itself. I flipped back through the
previous
sections and realized that the title fonts for those also corresponded
with the
subject––thin fine lines for the section on
“air/ar,” and jaggedly florid lines
for the pages on “fire/fogo.” I guessed correctly
that the final section would
contain a heavy bold font indicative of the earth element.

I was
happily dazzled by the first photograph in the
section on water: small bursts of white light inside softly iridescent
haloes afloat
inside a pool of marine blue. Opposite the photo sat
Alexandra’s poem, “Beyond
the Visible.” Reading it, then looking again at
Joseph’s amazing photograph, I
couldn’t help thinking of the lights in the image as angels
and guiding spirits
standing guard with me over my mother emerging soul.

The second
poem in the section, “Unrehearsed
Somewhere,” seemed to speak directly to Mom’s state
of transitional
consciousness in which she could not be described as fully inhabiting
this
world or the next:

As I read
this poem aloud, I sensed unseen others
drawing very near. This neither surprised nor frightened me. Many years
before,
my mother had told me how she used to walk some fifteen blocks at night
from
her job at the old DeSoto Hotel (now the DeSoto Hilton) in downtown Savannah
to her home and children on Jefferson Street on the city’s West Side. Whenever she had to walk by herself,
which was most of the time, a man would show up on the opposite side of
the
street and walk a path parallel to hers. She never spoke to him, but he
would
indicate to her when she should avoid an approaching stranger, take a
certain
turn, or walk a little faster to reach home a little sooner.After she got closer to
the house, the man would
disappear somewhere. Sitting in her room and reading to her, I
suspected that
this guardian soul who used to walk with her, among however many
others, was
with us now.

Page after
page, I marveled at the creative
synchronicity between poetry, dual languages, and photography in Universes Beyond the Visible ~ Elements of
Dream. The glittering rapture of “Ocean’s
Ascent” pulled me inside a deep
reverie about the changes taking place in my life, which for a decade
had been
largely defined by my role as a caregiver.

The
exceptional quality of art and poetry did not
diminish in section four, titled “earth/terra,” of
the book. If anything, it
increased with a richly fertile blend of color and song that enchanted
the eye
and soothed the mind. For some reason, Joseph’s short poem,
“Circle of Life,”
struck me with the force of a boulder. I wanted to read it aloud. Only
I could not.
Something similar happened upon reading Alexandra’s poem, and
viewing the
accompanying photograph for “Tableau with more than
Harlequin.”

Whatever the
cause of my unexpected inability to read
aloud, it seemed to have the same impact on Mom’s roommate,
Mrs. Rivers,
because she did not shake her bed rail or call out once. Just as I came
to
accept that some unseen force appeared to have cancelled my ability to
recite
aloud, I turned to the poem “Contemplation,” with
its majestic accompanying
image of a stone bridge amid lush forest greenery. Without hesitation,
I did read
aloud this time:

The peculiar
thing is that it was clearly my voice
reciting the words of the poet-photographer Joseph, and yet the one
speaking
felt indisputably like my mother, WilliMae Griffin Lloyd.

My thoughts
glided peacefully through the remaining
words and images of Universes Beyond the
Visible ~ Elements of Dream. Instead of profoundly marking
the end of
something, the last page seemed to signal a new and important
beginning.

THE FIFTH
NIGHT

On the
morning of February 8,
2006,
a very chilly Wednesday, I did as I had been doing for almost a
week––drove
home from the nursing home so I could bathe, catch up on some work,
grab a nap,
and eat before heading back out in the evening. I prepared a larger
dinner than
intended but had resolved to make myself eat it when the telephone
rang. I
answered it and stopped breathing at the sound of my brother
Wallace’s choked
baritone voice: “Our mother’s at peace
now.”

In less than
twenty minutes, I stood outside the
nursing home breathing deeply the cold night air to steady my nerves
and
strengthen my soul. I embraced two nieces who were standing outside
crying and
gave one of them my jacket. Inside, the hallway and Mom’s
room were filled with
my blood-kin. Their eyes and their broken hearts overflowed with grief.
In a
space beyond their weeping, I also saw my mother’s eyes. They
were open now and
shining, like two small suns radiating their gifts of light and love
for the
very first time and always.